Author: jetbrane

“The political passivism implicit in Machen’s understanding of the church, however, must not be rendered a justification for Christian escapism (something charged against the Lutheran doctrine of the two kingdoms also). Machen himself was active in politics precisely because he knew the church should not be. Christians who look to the church to engage in political reforms invariably fail to explore other means by which they as citizens, along with believers and nonbelievers, may engage in the political process. In other words, to say the church has no responsibility for politics is very different from describing what duties Christians themselves have as citizens and neighbors. As they are called, Christians have a duty to seek the welfare of the city (Jer. 29:7). What Machen’s example teaches is that Christians have no right to expect the church as a corporate body to seek the city’s welfare other than through the spiritual means of proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ.”

D. G. Hart
The Difference Between Christians & The Church
Modern Reformation — 2004

Dr. D. G. Hart is another gentleman who is a carrier of the R2Kt virus. Dr. Hart has written a whole book on the subject entitled, “A Secular Faith: Why Christianity Favors the Separation of Church and State.”

Like D. R. Scott Clark, Dr. D. G. Hart is a intelligent man until he gets on this subject. I have read several of his books with great profit, just as I have read several articles by Dr. R. Scott Clark with profit. However, all that is beneficent in what they write is largely negated by their work on this subject.

Take Hart’s quote above. In the quote he notes that individual Christians can work and proclaim in the “common realm” while the Church cannot. Having pointed this out before the problem with this is that it results in a “each man doing what is right in his own eyes.”

Let’s take the last time this approach was pursued on a large scale in 1930’s Germany. According to Hart’s theory individual Christians should have spoken out against National Socialism. The problem here though is that Hart’s theory also countenances individual Christians speaking out in favor of National Socialism or Communism or any number of other Biblically judged aberrant systems. In Hart’s theory there is no place that any individual Christian can hear an authoritative “Thus Saith The Lord,” since the Scriptures don’t speak to these kinds of issues and so each individual Christian is free to do what is right in their own eyes. And so, in a conversation touching the 1930’s Hart, Clark and other R2Kt infected people, even now, if they are consistent, cannot say it was wrong, according to God’s Word, for individual Christians to support National Socialism or Communism in post WWI Germany. They might be able to say that as individual Christians they believe it was wrong, but if another individual Christian came along and said it was right it would remain a matter or “just two opinions,” since God’s word doesn’t speak to these kind of issues.

Now R2Kt types will appeal to the wisdom of Natural Law to serve as an arbiter on the kinds of issues that the Church can’t speak to but as we’ve said before Natural Law is invoked by everybody for everything. Without looking I’d be willing to bet that even some National Socialist theorist in the 1930’s invoked Natural Law to support the Nationalist Socialist regime in 1930’s Germany.

If the R2Kt virus becomes epidemic its hard to guess what the toll will be on the Church and on the culture.

“Were this version of Lutheran Theology (the paradigm of R2Kt virus – BLM) taken to its logical conclusion it would deprive the gospel of any intellectual content and the law of any moral content. The biblical narrative and theological reflection on it would not be given any epistemological status to engage secular learning. It would champion a form of Lutheran quietism in the realm of education. Much as German Lutheranism in the 1930’s separated the two kingdoms (government under law separated from Christianity under the gospel) and allowed the Nazi movement to go unchecked by appeal to an intellectual and moral content of the Christian vision, so this approach would allow modern secular learning to go unchallenged by that vision.”

Robert Benne
Quality With Soul: How Six Premier Colleges and Universities Keep Faith w/ Their Religious Traditions — pg. 133

The Two Kingdom theology that informs the R2Kt virus of Westminster West offers no answer for a unified theory of knowledge. Following the implications of R2Kt viral thinking there would be little if any possibility of building University if only for the reason that knowledge that obtains in the realm of grace is not the same kind of knowledge that is obtained in the the common realm. Instead of Universities we are left with Multiversities.

The dualism incipient in R2Kt viral thinking creates two different kinds of knowledge. One kind of knowledge is anchored in right reason. A second kind of knowledge anchored in revelation and faith. But in keeping with classical dualism R2Kt viral thinking offers no answer as to how these two kinds of knowledge can be reconciled. When such a situation obtains resolution must be arrived at in one way or another, if even only in an unofficial or pragmatic sense. The possible resolutions, it seems to me, reduce to two. The first possible option was seen in history when the Church was in the ascendancy. Here the ‘spiritual’ truths triumphed over the truth of reason. When the state has been in the ascendancy the option has been for the truths of reason to triumph over ‘spiritual’ truths.

Of course another consequence of R2Kt viral thinking is that different realms are created where the different knowledges hold sway. The realm that right reason rules is the secular realm. The realm that revelation rules is the gracious realm. This creates another dualism where the former realm is ruled by the age to come and the latter realm is ruled by this present wicked age. This viral way of thinking has the ‘now’ front loaded in the realm of grace with the ‘not yet’ being overwhelmingly predominant in the secular realm. The result of this is not only a dualism between a secular and gracious realm, and a dualism between two different kinds of knowledge but also it largely turns the ‘now, not yet’ into a dualistic program.

R2Kt seeks to resolved this by offering Christ’s Lordship as the means by which unity is found between their dualistic realms. The problem here though is that Christ’s Lordship is dualistically divided between a Lordship that is explicitly revealed (for the realm of grace) and a Lordship that is, at best, only subtly suggested (for the realm of grace). Christ’s own Lordship is thus put into a kind of dualism mode. There clearly is no way whereby these differing forms and expressions of Christ’s Lordship can be reconciled.

Since such a theory cannot work in the real world the effect has been, as Benne notes,that a kind of retreatism prevails. This in turn allows the most vile of cultures to flower.

One can see how it might be possible for R2Kt viral thinking works in a culture largely influenced by Christian categories. I can only see it as being an unmitigated disaster when present in a culture where Christianity is in eclipse.

Dr. R. Scott Clark (Typhoid Bob) tried to suggest that Federal Vision and Theonomy were separated at birth Siamese twins born of the bitch mother legalism. My purpose is to continue to seek to erase that false and libelous characterization. Since I have no tuck with Federal Vision as it concerns their doctrine of justification I will let them defend their own house. However, when it comes to theonomy, I have a few sympathies. So, I offer the following quotes to continue to help reveal the silliness is Dr. R. Scott Clark’s presentation.

“The Protestant revolt was significant primarily…for its proclamation of the radical doctrine of justification by faith, which abolished…the whole social order which depended on the soteriology of mediating institutions.”

R. J. Rushdoony
Politics of Guilt and Pity, — p. 263

Does that sound like somebody who believed that justification was by sanctification? Does that sound like somebody who was anything but Reformed? Of course the problem with TB is that if one isn’t infected with the R2Kt virus then one can’t be Reformed.

“This legalistic principle,” says Rushdoony, “against which Romans, and all Scripture, is directed, is as invalid politically as religiously.” (Ibid., p. 294.) Moreover, “[M]en cannot seek justification socially by law and works of law, and long retain a concept of individual salvation through justification by faith….Men who have Christ as their all-sufficient priest cannot create or tolerate a priestly and soteriological state.” (Ibid., p. 299.)

Here is another quote that throws a ton of sand into Typhoid Bob’s theory of the close relation between Federal Vision and Theonomy.

“Scripture centers on the obedience of Christ — both active and passive — because it is the necessary requirement for the full justification of sinners.”

Dr. Greg Bahnsen
Theonomy in Christian Ethics, p. 152

So here is the grandfather and the father of modern day theonomy clearly articulating the standard Reformed doctrine of Justification. Obviously they are NOT Federal Visionists on the doctrine of justification.